CarbonLite: Inside the World’s Largest Plastic Bottle Recycling Plant

Views:528914|Rating:4.75|View Time:6:31Minutes|Likes:3190|Dislikes:165CarbonLite is the world’s largest “bottle-to-bottle” plastic recycling plant in Riverside, Calif.

“SoCal Connected” takes a look inside the state-of-the-art facility where billions of plastic bottles are churned on an annual basis. The process involves transforming old plastic bottles into PET pellets and flakes in order to produce new plastic bottles.

The bottles are required to go through metal detectors, a special “prewash” phase, and a label-removing facility before they can become shiny, brand new pellets.

Even though your plastic water bottle might not weigh as much, a square bale of plastic bottles can weigh more than 1,300 pounds, as Derrick Shore reveals in this segment of “SoCal Connected.”

My question is what chemicals is the plastic leaching into hot pasturized liquids they fill them with? There's no question drinks it of glass are far better tasting, not to mention no risk of glass shedding chemicals under heat.

I have picking garbage on beaches in Northern Norway for 3 years now. On beaches where people haven’t lived since 1950, before plastic was invented. We find mostly plastic. A lot of that is plastic bottles. Some are Norwegian of course, but most of them are foreign bottles! I am amazed that not every country have the return system that California, Germany and the Nordic countries have!

Just to give an example on how long things float: In even norther than where I live they found a thing used for lobster fishing. It was located to a fisherman in Nova Scotia…

How about printing on the bottles instead of making wrappers that are used once? Why aren’t the caps usable at the same facility? If it is because they are a different type of plastic, why not make caps of the same type?

In a state where water is very limited, how much water do they waste in this facility? Why not use glass, or as another user said when living in Germany they sold thick plastic bottles that required a deposit and those bottles were sent back, cleaned, and re-used without having to break them down and re mold them.

If this is as close as we can get, then we are many years away from solving this problem, meanwhile plastic bottles are dumped in the sea. Stop producing plastic, or learn how to re-use it. A bottle of water bought today and drank and thrown away, in the bin, which get's put into landfill will take over 1000 years to dissolve. I days use, a 1000 years to dissolve the bottle Why use plastic?

Just left a tour at the Malarkey Plant. FYI people they make the best shingles on the market. Our company installs them lots and they are significantly better than competitors. You should praise innovation. These markers previously as we know, went into the garbage bin.

Those pellets often turn up in fish and represent a major source of pollution. How the pellets get into the ocean I do not know. What I would like to see is housebuilding replacements in the form of lumber sizes for foundations.With Trump wildly throwing out 25% tariffs onto Canadian lumber without studies showing how housing prices increasing , as they presently are, $8,000 – $9,000 on the average home a large portion of those wishing to buy are being refused mortgages as housing prices jump. Trump’s adding the tariffs has meant increased profits for Canadian lumber companies, not the intended results.

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